How to use the new Facebook “Donate” button for your Charity in the UK

Now Facebook has made it possible for all charities to add a Donate Button on their facebook page (if you’re still using a profile or a group for your organisation’s main Facebook activity this won’t work for you).

HOW TO SET UP YOUR DONATE BUTTON

We’ll talk you through how by using a local Birmingham Charity – the fantastic Birmingham Conservation Trust with the their Coffin Works – as an example. (Transparency – Nick Booth used to be a trustee of BCT)

The donate now feature works through the pages call to action button, but the donate option is only available to pages that are set up as non profits. So to begin check what you have your page set up as.

Log into facebook and visit the page you want to set up a “donate now” button for. You must be an admin of the page to have access to this.

Underneath the page title it will tell you what your page is set up as, in the case of Birmingham Conservation Trust (in the example below) they are already registered as a Non-profit – but if you’re not it’s easy to change.

Go to your pages about section:

Select Page info and look for the category – hover your cursor over this section, The edit button will appear. Change your page category to Non-Profit and click “Save changes”

Now you’re ready to add the “Donate Now” button. Look at your header image and click “Create Call to Action”…

…If you’ve previously set up a different call to action, click on the button and select “Edit Call to Action” from the drop down list.

Either way this will open up a separate dialogue box for you to add/edit this option.

Under choose button, click on the link to open the drop down menu and select “Donate Now”

Have the URL for where you want the “Donate Now” button to redirect to ready. This could be your Justgiving Page, Virgin Money, or a page in your own website, Wherever you want it set up to be. Paste the address into the website text box – and then click create.

That’s it your button has been created, Facebook will then ask you if you want to promote your button, the will require you to pay for any promotion. You can either choose to Promote it or click Not Now to get rid of the dialogue box.

Now when people visit your page they will see the Donate Now call to action right at the top of your page.

This does come with a disclaimer though as, when fans click the “Donate Now” button on a non-profit’s page you are first alerted that the organisation is “Not endorsed by or affiliated with Facebook” and then you’re redirected to the page’s external site:

This is just Facebook covering their backs and is no reason not to donate – Visitors just need to use their judgement when redirected. Just check are you being taken to a reputable site, think of fundraising pages such as JustGiving, Virgin Money etc or the charities own website.

BUT Simply having a donate button on your page isn’t enough. Think about how you use Facebook? Do you visit pages often, and when you do, do you pay any attention to the header or do you just consume the information that comes into your newsfeed? So what can you do to encourage donation?

HERE’S 5 IDEAS TO MAKE THE MOST OF, AND PROMOTE YOUR DONATE BUTTON

1. This one is obvious – tell your fans it’s there. Encourage donations by mentioning the “Donate Now” option in your news posts, and consider creating new content that makes users aware of the button.

2. Change your header image to draw attention to the Donate button. You don’t want something too wordy but include arrows, text, or anything else you can think off to point to the button.

5. And this is important as it matters to the long term goals of your organisation. Remember your page should NOT just turn into a call for donations with every post being about that.
Your content comes first, and the right content matters as will pave the road for more valuable long-term relationships – so mix it up.

4 comments

Thank you for this article. Do you know if FB UK has changed, as I can’t find a non-profit category, only charity organisation. With charity organisation, it doesn’t allow you to add a ‘donate’ button.